I was always a big Pete Rose fan, so naturally I was bent out of shape when he agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball in 1989. But now Deadspin is reporting that a baseball memorabilia collector has X-ray’d one of the Hit King’s bats to confirm or deny rumors that the bat had actually been corked. And it was.

[Collector] Bill Schubert wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Sure, he had heard the rumors about Pete corking. He didn’t necessarily believe them; he didn’t disbelieve them either. But he certainly didn’t expect to see what he saw.

“I thought that I’d have to send the X-rays off to an expert to tell me if they saw anything funny,” Schubert says. “But as soon as we saw it, there it was, right in front of our eyes. I said, ‘That’s cork in there.’ I was blown away.”

It is, indisputably, cork. And with an unbroken chain of ownership, no one but Rose could have put the cork there. –Barry Petchesky.

Does this put a damper on Rose’s career record of 4,256 hits? Yeah, it does. Whether corking a bat gives a hitter an advantage or not, it’s still against the rules. That said, it’s hard to strip someone of credibility when he had so little at this point. He bet on his own games while managing the Reds, he lied about it, and now this. He’ll still be one of the all-time great players, but he’ll never be one of the all-time great people. At least that’s what my mother would say, right before she wandered into the basement for another hit of meth.

Join The Discussion

Meh. Hits, schmits. Based on the photo, it’s obvious that all Rose really cares about are the tits.

06.08.10 at 2:30 pm

Otto Man

Looks like those tits are corked too.

06.08.10 at 2:32 pm

DimpieChimplins

The detailed piece on Deadspin pretty much makes it clear that he was corking for the sole purpose of passing Ty Cobb’s hit record.

He clearly had cork in his bats, but still has lead in the pencil!

06.08.10 at 2:53 pm

Lindsey

Come on, Josh. Being let down by Pete Rose is like going to a hotel room with a guy who was already accused of killing another chick he met the exact same way he met you, and…wait. Nevermind. Damn you, Pete Rose. Damn you.

06.08.10 at 2:58 pm

Enrico Pallazzo

They make take away his credibility, but they will never take away his WWE Hall of Fame status.

06.08.10 at 3:58 pm

SSGT Barnes

I demand to know who that woman is, where more pics of her are, and to subscribe to her newsletter(read: porn)

06.08.10 at 4:09 pm

Taco_Jones

Let’s just assume that every player in ever era of baseball cheated somehow. Except Griffey.